Poetry for Students

Volume 24 107

dual nature of his focus: the loss and the question
of whether faith can help one cope with that loss.

The speaker’s tone contains a touch of bitter-
ness as he declares that his possessions have been
“dispossessed,” taken against his will. This word
also suggests that, as a result of the loss, he has be-
come dispossessed, or homeless. The two losses
that the speaker has experienced, a loved one and
the power of his religious faith to ease his suffer-
ing, have caused this sense of homelessness. These
losses are revealed in the second half of the stanza,
where the speaker notes the influence of the past
on the present when he wonders whether he should
remember or forget the conjugation of the verb “to
love.” The following stanzas illustrate the pain
caused by the memory of the loved one, who is
now lost, and the inability of faith to relieve that
pain. At this point, the language of his religion, ex-
pressed in litanies, liturgies, and prayers, has be-
come “a dead tongue / in which the final sentence
has been spoken.”

Like Frost’s speaker in “Design,” the speaker
in “The Litany” turns to a description of nature’s
cycle, moving from a personal to a universal focus
as he describes the process of rain falling on the
landscape and then evaporating back into the
clouds. Yet, like the speaker in Frost’s poem, he is
unable to keep from including his response when
he determines that the rain, which engages in a
“complete” process of life and death, is neverthe-
less “indifferent” to the sufferings that the process
causes. He recognizes that we are unable to stop
this cycle, which continues “without our agency.”

The personal tone gains intensity in the third
stanza when the speaker’s sadness combines with
unrestrained bitterness. Here, the speaker reveals
the failure of his faith to ease his pain. At this point,
he does not believe that the ceremonial candles will
conquer the darkness or that the incense will carry
his prayers to heaven. The Madonna, who has pre-
viously offered him comfort, is now silent stone,
and the consecrated wine expresses not salvation
through the blood of Christ but fury over “the death
of a young god,” a reference to a loss of faith as
well as the loss of the loved one.

Gioia turns from scriptural to allegorical allu-
sions in the next stanza, which help add a univer-
sal as well as personal focus. The wasteland
imagery in the fourth stanza reinforces the
speaker’s sense of desolation in the face of an in-
different world. Nature’s cycle is again described,
but here the imagery is darker. All life seems to
have ended in the vacant rooms that contain an

eternal silence, reflecting “what we become” as we

return to the dust that we are. This prayer tastes of

“the bitterness of earth and ashes.”

The confessional intimacy of the fifth stanza

adds a sad poignancy to the poem. The speaker ad-

mits that his prayer for conciliation is “inchoate and

unfinished,” because his suffering has not abated.

For the first time, he speaks directly to the lost one

and to the memory that has become a painful

“lesion.” His rosary cannot offer benediction, be-

cause the words he recites in prayer only “count

out time’s / illusions.” As he recognizes that the

past can never be reclaimed, the speaker turns to a

new audience, the reader of his poem, and to the

“litany” of loss that is universally shared.

The reader is a voyeur who shares in the

speaker’s suffering, an acknowledgment that ap-

pears to offer some comfort to the speaker. When

he returns to a description of nature’s cycle, he

now seems to find a paradox in the rising and

falling of the river. The cycle of life and death

represented by the river not only shatters and

splinters but also becomes “luminous” in its in-

evitable progress “skyward,” bringing with it a

suggestion of salvation for the dead as well as for

the living. In his rendering of the speaker’s need

in “The Litany” to come to an ultimate acceptance

of death as part of God’s design, Gioia creates

an eloquent statement of the often-suffocating

aftermath of loss and the intense desire to

comprehend it.

Source:Wendy Perkins, Critical Essay on “The Litany,” in

Poetry for Students, Thomson Gale, 2006.

Dana Gioia and Christina Vick

In the following interview, Gioia recounts his

early love of reading and his influences, and ex-

pounds on methods of writing poetry.

The Litany

The poem’s

juxtaposition of secular

and religious images calls

into question the ability of

faith to help alleviate the

pain of loss.”